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A Room of One’s Own

A couple of years ago I decided to have ‘A Room of One’s Own’ tattooed on my lower right forearm. It is extremely hard to explain to people what the words mean – I found this out when I tried to tell the tattooist why I was having this particular tattoo.   How to explain that…

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‘A Sonnet for Clay Eaters’

Clay crushed under calloused feet and cajoled by hopeful hands is hurled into moulds and sun baked near cottonwood trees. And so, parched bricks are made, one on top another, to build a home. You squat inside, let terra red shadows swaddle your born-bright who stares at you as if seeing God. She pitches arias…

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Every Page A Stage

[Movie trailer voice-over style announcement, very deep and gravel throated]: Coming Soon from The Poetry School – Every Page A Stage – starring Jane Draycott! With lots of sessions over two weeks and a real concentration of attention on a topic, we’re delighted to welcome Jane Draycott  back to the Poetry School with her Every…

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Logbook: ‘There was the time I woke up in the morning and forgot how to walk’

Conversation overheard at running club: Runner A: “Who do you get to wash your windows?” Runner B: “The rain washes my windows” Runner C: “That’s what ‘usbands are for” Runner A: “Well the rain is my ‘usband” *** After watching a documentary about death row in America.. Who would live in a house on the…

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New Homers – a Reading & Writing Course

I’ve had a vivid and unscholarly interest in the Homeric stories since I was a boy. In those days both the battles of the Iliad and Odysseus’s wanderings among monsters and goddesses filled me with a simple, childish sense of wonder. In my early twenties I discovered Patrocleia, the first section of Christopher Logue’s Homer…

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The Plot Inside The Poem

The playwright David Mamet famously said that what we want to know more than anything else is ‘what happens next’.  My own obsession with narrative goes back to my writerly roots in theatre and later in film; I’m always looking for the story, even when it isn’t obvious. I’ve been making a study of the…

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Logbook: ‘My first day as Digital Poet-in-Residence is almost over’

Monday 28th April My first day as Digital Poet-in-Residence is almost over – in 30 minutes to be exact.  I felt very different today – not in a turning-into-a-hologram kind of way, as some of my friends have helpfully suggested as being what will happen when I become ‘in-resident’ but in a ‘I-feel-like-a-writer’ kind of…

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Live Q&A with Jen Hadfield: 7 May, 1pm

Who listens like lichen listens . . . ‘Lichen’, Jen Hadfield We’re delighted to have an exclusive audience with Jen Hadfield, who will be coming to CAMPUS on May 7 to discuss the startlingly original, Byssus, her latest collection, and her first after the T.S. Eliot prize-winning Nigh-No-Place. Byssus – pronounced ‘bissus’, and meaning the…

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Meet the Digital Poet in Residence: Kim Moore

An Interview with Kim Moore

What on earth do poets do all day? It’s never been easy to earn your way as a professional poet, even for the greats. Wallace Stevens sold insurance policies, T S Eliot managed checking accounts, Marianne Moore worked in a library, Maya Angelou sang in nightclubs and Robert Frost was a chicken farmer (and his earliest…

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Write more poems this Summer at the Poetry School

It’s just over a week to go before our Summer Term starts. We’ve dozens of new courses and workshops – both face to face and online – to help you wrangle your poems into shape. You can download the whole programme here – or browse the highlights below. Not taken one of our classes before?…

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Online Q&A panel: ‘The Path to a First Collection’ with Amy Wack, Hannah Lowe, Kim Moore and Neil Astley

The path to a first collection – torturous and winding, or downhill all the way? As part of our CAMPUS Digital Open Day, we’ve put together a powerhouse panel of two poet/editor pairings – Amy Wack & Kim Moore, and Hannah Lowe & Neil Astley – who’ll be here to talk luck versus hard work,…

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Open Workshop: ‘Dream Mechanics’

Do you write poetry in your sleep? Are you prone to visions of the night? Do you believe dreams reveals aspects of yourself? You’re not alone – poets from Chaucer to Kleinzahler have long delighted in the fantastical and uncertain landscapes created by our unconscious minds. In this workshop, poet and publisher Tom Chivers will…

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CAMPUS Digital Open Day: join us May 7

CAMPUS – the social network for poets – is hosting its first ever Digital Open Day this Wednesday 7 May. If you’re currently a CAMPUS member or thinking about joining our community, this is best way to find out more, interact with other poets, as well as a rare opportunity to peek into our many…

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‘Scientists Count Whales From Space’

  At night we listen to the crackle of antennae as we track populations. 10 million species and then these slow, shallow swimmers, pale against wavelengths. Image analysis shows us 55 probable, 23 possible pixels driven to extinction. We should monitor more. On this screen where lost things are un-found, automated systems surprise us with…

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The Poetry School / Pighog Shortlist Announcement

The Poetry School and Pighog are pleased to announce the shortlist for their second annual pamphlet competition. Judges Simon Barraclough and Catherine Smith read more than 600 ten-page entries, longlisting 35 of them, and from that longlist, picked the following shortlist of 13.   Amy McCauley – Slops Fiona Cartwright – Mrs Darwin’s Egg Francine…

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Podcast: Hannah Lowe reads from ‘Chick’ and a new poem

Last term, Hannah Lowe headlined our Autumn term launch party and read from her debut collection, Chick, where she thrilled the crowd with tales of misadventure from her childhood and illuminated the secret life of her enigmatic, card-playing father. And now, with this podcast, we re-present the whole reading in all its glory. If you…

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‘The Poetry School has changed my life by providing an international forum for writing and talking about poetry – it is wonderful.’

To see further testimonials from our students, please click here.

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Taking a poem for a walk

To celebrate the release of Walking London – our new audio walking tour download – we asked tutor and urban wanderer, Tamar Yoseloff to write about why walking inspires her and how the best ideas always happen on foot. In her brilliant book, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit says: Walking, ideally, is a…

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‘On the Borders of DTs’

(from The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas) It’s a wild wet day in this tided town and it’s too cold to write. Scarlet ants crawl from the holes in the rocks onto my idle hand. The wind’s blowing hair across my face. I stare from this muddied edge at the shapes of rocks carved in…

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Poetry School / Pighog Poetry Pamphlet Competition longlist announced

The Poetry School and Pighog are pleased to announce the longlist for their second annual pamphlet competition. After receiving over 600 entries (a big increase on last year’s entries), judges Simon Barraclough and Catherine Smith can reveal the 35 poets on the longlist. Simon Barraclough says of the judging process ‘Arriving at the long-list was…

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Summer courses on CAMPUS

Dear CAMPUS poets – our swimming shorts are on and our 12 tog duvets have been stuffed back in the attic. Summer is arriving. The Poetry School’s summer term starts 5 May 2014 and we’ve got lots of new, excellent online courses packed full of powerful poetry prompts and fool-proof exercises to get you all…

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This is the end

So I have come to the end of my residency at the Poetry School. It has been a lot of fun, lots of writing in the evening, lots of editing in the wee weekend hours. A great opportunity, and thanks to all of the staff at the Poetry School for being so supportive and encouraging….

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Twit Twit Twit: Charol-Annnnn Dhuffy

One of the great things about Twitter is how people can take on personalities for comic affects. There’s a fake Queen, fake Prince Charles, fake David Cameron, so why not have a fake Carol-Ann Duffy? Young_Laureate’s tweets are hilarious and weird, and have very little to do with C.A.D. (or do they?) but the idiosyncrasies…

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‘Is There a Doctor in the House?’ The day in tweets…

[View the story “Is There A Doctor In The House?” on Storify]

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Keep Yes and No Unsplit: the rise of Internet translation

Last year, I was delighted to be asked by SJ Fowler to be part of his Camaradefest (a continuation of his series of events where two poets collaborate on a project) with Jack Underwood, Faber Poet and lecturer on Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College. We merged recent ideas which we were both interested in. Then,…

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